Product-Audience Fit: $420,000 Revenue In 1 Month

Many influencers with millions of followers struggle to make significant money. Meanwhile, some creators with fewer than 10,000 followers earn millions yearly. For example, this creator makes $1m per year with 5800 followers.

This difference comes down to Product-Audience Fit.

Building a large audience without strategy often leads to scattered distribution.

Early on, many influencers gained followers by chasing trends, which initially worked for brand deals. Now, brands are smarter about measuring ROI, and influencers are finding it harder to monetize.

Some influencers with over 1 million followers make less than $100,000 per month because they're either selling products their audience doesn't want or relying on short-term sponsorships rather than selling their own product.

Case Study #1: Pieter Levels on Lex Fridman Podcast

Pieter Levels' recent appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast led to a massive revenue boost. His monthly revenue jumped to $420,000.

This success happened because Lex Fridman's audience aligns perfectly with Pieter's startups.

The listeners are young, tech-savvy professionals interested in Machine Learning, Startups, and AI.

2 of Pieter's products fit well:

1. Photo AI - An AI-generated Photo Studio

2. Make Book - A book on shipping products quickly

It also worked because Pieter Levels is a contrarian in terms of traditional VC-narrative. He's pro-bootstrapped rightfully so his advice is unique.

And everyone loves differentiation.

Plus he has a massive fanbase that will watch and listen the whole podcast and thus improve the CTR metric which gives a boost in YouTube's algorithm.

Now, there aren't many podcasts like Lex Fridman's that will bring him this much audience.

But he can easily repeat the strategy by going to similar (albeit smaller) podcasts and giving interviews to blogs with similar audience.

Pieter Levels doesn't do paid ads but if he did, he can easily cross the $1m+ per month mythical figure using FB Ads and Google Ads, especially Google Display Network.

Paid Ads on top of Organic Traffic is like pouring gasoline on fire to make a bigger fire.

Case Study #2: Miss Excel on Morning Brew

Miss Excel gained popularity on TikTok with her entertaining Excel videos.

When Morning Brew expressed interest in featuring her just 4 months later, she didn't have a product to sell.

Her business coach advised her to create something to capitalize on this opportunity.

She quickly developed a course before her feature in Morning Brew, and within two months, the passive income from course sales began replacing her day job salary (full case-study here.)

Miss Excel's audience aligned perfectly with Morning Brew's readership.

Since every business in the world, big or small, uses Excel, this partnership led to substantial sales.

Be mindful of the content you create so you can monetize correctly the first time.

A tool to Instantly publish your own books on the web for free

Writebook is a free platform that allows authors to publish their books directly on the web without needing a traditional publisher.

Jason Fried's introductory blog post provides an excellent overview of Writebook's features and benefits.

One notable example of a book published using this platform is "Getting Real" by 37signals.

Well-written books on the web can get more backlinks to your company page.

One recommended video on Networking Cheat Sheet for Sales and Lifelong Friends

This video is pound for pound the best networking advice you'll ever find.

Remember, likability is one of the most important reasons to get hired. People do business with people they like.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Very interesting insight on TikTok Shop.

TikTok Shop is making significant strides in the e-commerce space, potentially challenging Amazon's dominance.

By pushing for Fulfilled by TikTok (FBT) deliveries, TikTok aims to keep sales within its ecosystem rather than directing them to Amazon.

This is massive as Amazon has always been the place where you can find the cheapest products and Chinese are known to produce the cheapest products in the world.

2/

Love this from Molson, "VC is extremely feast or famine and the feast is oftentimes less profitable than that of bootstrapping."

This is what marketing does.

VCs have more money so they pay tech blogs with distribution like Techcrunch and ProductHunt to promote their narrative of how all startups should be built by taking VC money.

Meanwhile, bootstrappers don't like tooting their own horn for obvious reasons (such as competition) so you never learn the realities that bootstrapping is a better bet to take.

Thankfully, we have Pieter Levels, Bootstrappers and Jason Fried's of the world to turn around the narrative.

The chances of you making $1 billion company are low. The chances of you making $1 million company are extremely high.

Yet so many founders choose the former.

3/

You can make $80 profit from people who don't care about money (rich people) or want status if you have their attention.

Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos prints money with Amazon.

Reminds me of this famous Jeff Bezos quote:

"I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time."

So all the people who want a product similar to what they saw on Instagram eventually search for it on Amazon as they know it will be available for very cheap.

Rabbit Holes

1. YouTube SEO, EMDs in SEO, and Instagram’s Flagged for Review Followers - Instagram's new feature allows users to remove bot followers, potentially increasing engagement rates for genuine content creators.

2. Using the Power of Science to Supercharge Student Learning - This is a draft of a book on learning how to learn. Once you understand these concepts, you can learn anything fast. Turns out, spaced repetition isn't the only way.

3. How Olly Richards earned $175,461 from a Google Doc - This Google Doc went viral. Now imagine if he used a PDF or an Opt-In form instead. It wouldn't have went as viral and it certainly wouldn't make for a good story. Vehicle of distribution is as important as the goods themselves.

Until next time!

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with a friend. If a friend sent you this, get the next newsletter by signing up here.

Read all the old case studies here.

And don't forget to follow me on X.

More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Ditch The Free Plan In Your SaaS (LINK)

2. Write Viral LinkedIn & X Posts using Claude 3.5 Sonnet (LINK)

3. Effective CTAs (Call To Action) For Conversion Rate (LINK)